William Thackeray - A History of Pendennis. Volume 1. His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy

Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and gave a start and a laugh. "Sure there's somebody in the dean's garden," she cried out; and withdrew with perfect calmness, while Pen darted away with his face glowing like coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when he ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing bright in the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of the cathedral tolling nine, the dean's guests (all save one, who had called for his horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were partaking of tea and buttered cakes in Mrs. Dean's drawing-room – when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan.

Pen arrived at home in due time afterward; and was going to slip off to bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, and his high-strung nerves had been at almost a maddening pitch – when a summons came to him by John, the old footman, whose countenance bore a very ominous look, that his mother must see him below.

On this he tied on his neckcloth again, and went down stairs to the drawing-room. There sate not only his mother, but her friend, the Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen's face looked very pale by the light of the lamp – the doctor's was flushed, on the contrary, and quivering with anger and emotion.

Pen saw at once that there was a crisis, and that there had been a discovery. "Now for it," he thought.

"Where have you been, Arthur?" Helen said, in a trembling voice.

"How can you look that – that dear lady, and a Christian clergyman in the face, sir?" bounced out the doctor, in spite of Helen's pale, appealing looks. "Where has he been? Where his mother's son should have been ashamed to go. For your mother's an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you bring pollution into her house, and make that spotless creature wretched with the thoughts of your crime?"

"Sir!" said Pen.

"Don't deny it, sir," roared the doctor. "Don't add lies, sir, to your other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you from the dean's garden. I saw you kissing the hand of that infernal painted – "

"Stop," Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp flickered up and shook, "I am a very young man, but you will please to remember that I am a gentleman – I will hear no abuse of that lady."

"Lady, sir," cried the doctor, " that a lady – you – you – you stand in your mother's presence and call that – that woman a lady! – "

"In any body's presence," shouted out Pen. "She is worthy of any place. She is as pure as any woman. She is as good as she is beautiful. If any man but you insulted her, I would tell him what I thought; but as you are my oldest friend, I suppose you have the privilege to doubt of my honor."

"No, no, Pen, dearest Pen," cried out Helen in an excess of joy. "I told, I told you, doctor, he was not – not what you thought;" and the tender creature coming trembling forward flung herself on Pen's shoulder.

Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the doctors in doctordom. He was glad this explanation had come. "You saw how beautiful she was," he said to his mother, with a soothing, protecting air, like Hamlet with Gertrude in the play. "I tell you, dear mother, she is as good. When you know her you will say so. She is of all, except you, the simplest, the kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she not be on the stage? – She maintains her father by her labor."

"Drunken old reprobate," growled the doctor, but Pen did not hear or heed.

"If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how pure and pious her whole conduct, you would – as I do – yes, as I do" – (with a savage look at the doctor) – "spurn the slanderer who dared to do her wrong. Her father was an officer, and distinguished himself in Spain. He was a friend of His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, and is intimately known to the Duke of Wellington, and some of the first officers of our army. He has met my uncle Arthur at Lord Hill's, he thinks. His own family is one of the most ancient and respectable in Ireland, and indeed is as good as our own. The – the Costigans, were kings of Ireland."

"Why, God bless my soul," shrieked out the doctor, hardly knowing whether to burst with rage or laughter, "you don't mean to say you want to marry her?"

Pen put on his most princely air. "What else, Dr. Portman," he said, "do you suppose would be my desire?"

Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden lunge of Pen's, the doctor could only gasp out, "Mrs. Pendennis, ma'am, send for the major."

"Send for the major? with all my heart," said Arthur, Prince of Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most superb wave of the hand. And the colloquy terminated by the writing of those two letters which were laid on Major Pendennis's breakfast-table, in London, at the commencement of Prince Arthur's most veracious history.

Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due time at Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail-coach, where a stout fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally with great-coats, had crowded him into a corner, and kept him awake by snoring indecently; where a widow lady, opposite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all the windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes of Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually from a bottle in her reticule; where, whenever he caught a brief moment of sleep, the twanging of the horn at the turnpike-gates, or the scuffling of his huge neighbor wedging him closer and closer, or the play of the widow's feet on his own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to the horrors and realities of life – a life which has passed away now and become impossible, and only lives in fond memories. Eight miles an hour, for twenty or five-and-twenty hours, a tight mail-coach, a hard seat, a gouty tendency, a perpetual change of coachmen grumbling because you did not fee them enough, a fellow-passenger partial to spirits-and-water – who has not borne with these evils in the jolly old times? and how could people travel under such difficulties? And yet they did, and were merry too. Next the widow, and by the side of the major's servant on the roof, were a couple of schoolboys going home for the midsummer holidays, and Major Pendennis wondered to see them sup at the inn at Bagshot, where they took in a cargo of ham, eggs, pie, pickles, tea, coffee, and boiled beef, which surprised the poor major, sipping a cup of very feeble tea, and thinking with a tender dejection that Lord Steyne's dinner was coming off at that very moment. The ingenuous ardor of the boys, however, amused the major, who was very good-natured, and he became the more interested when he found that the one who traveled inside with him, was a lord's son, whose noble father Pendennis, of course, had met in the world of fashion, which he frequented. The little lord slept all night through, in spite of the squeezing, and the horn-blowing, and the widow; and he looked as fresh as paint (and, indeed, pronounced himself to be so) when the major, with a yellow face, a bristly beard, a wig out of curl, and strong rheumatic griefs shooting through various limbs of his uneasy body, descended at the little lodge-gate at Fairoaks where the portress and gardener's wife reverentially greeted him; and, still more respectfully, Mr. Morgan, his man.

Helen was on the lookout for this expected guest, and saw him from her window. But she did not come forward immediately to greet him. She knew the major did not like to be seen at a surprise, and required a little preparation before he cared to be visible. Pen, when a boy, had incurred sad disgrace, by carrying off from the major's dressing-table a little morocco box, which it must be confessed contained the major's back teeth, which he naturally would leave out of his jaws in a jolting mail-coach, and without which he would not choose to appear. Morgan, his man, made a mystery of his wigs: curling them in private places: introducing them mysteriously to his master's room; – nor without his head of hair would the major care to show himself to any member of his family or any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then, and supplied these deficiencies; he groaned and moaned, and wheezed, and cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has been up all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to perform. And finally being belted, curled, and set straight, he descended upon the drawing-room, with a grave, majestic air, such as befitted one who was at once a man of business and a man of fashion.